I haven't read the entire Comcast TOS, but I assume there's nothing in it that prevents them from limiting the number of connections of certain protocols.
Limiting the number of connections to a fixed limit is throttling. If that limit is 0, it's no longer throttling, it's total suppression. How would you like your phone company if any phone call placed outside your own area code got cut off automatically after 20 seconds? Would you tolerate that?
As far as "see no evil" protections, they are not censoring based on content, they are throttling based on protocol.
They are doing this to all bittorrent traffic outside their network (but not between peers that are both within the Comcast network). Hence my "same area code" comment above.
However, I also have no problem with Comcast restricting the type of traffic that comes across their network.
This is all well and fine, if they actually said in their TOS that bittorrent traffic is not permitted. But they don't, do they?
Let's not pretend that most torrent traffic is legitimate...we all know it isn't. That's like suggesting legalization pot for everyone because it may help with some the side effects of chemo (there is no glaucoma benefit, btw). That argument has nothing to do with the general population.
The current drug laws work on the theory of "Some people use this substance for illegitimate purposes, so let's make it illegal even for those who want to use it legitimately.". I guess the same applies to bittorrent as well.
Frankly, blocking torrent traffic is the only sure way Comcast could secure themselves from lawsuits by copyright holders, which, I am sure, scares them a lot more than some nerds on Slashdot.
ISPs are common carriers, which makes them immune to such copyright lawsuits, in much the same way the RIAA won't sue AT&T if you decided to sing "Like a Virgin" over the phone. Under the DMCA all they have to do is take down alleged infringing content and notify alleged infrigers - if they do that, they have no liability.
Sending a RST packet is a perfectly legitimate way to close an unallowed TCP connection.
Yes, but what right does the ISP have to just automatically assume that such a connection is unallowed? There is no mention in the TOS that such traffic is forbidden. Also, by analyzing traffic and deciding what to censor based on content removes the "see no evil" protections of being a common carrier, which could make Comcast itself liable for all piracy on their network.
If thunderclouds can accelerate radiation energy, how come I never heard of people died in places where there are lots of thuderstorm activities due to radiation overdose?
The gamma rays were only detected because they were near a nuclear power plant. Presumably such plants have very sensitive radiation detection equipment, and the number of ACTUAL gamma ray photos is sufficiently low that only very sensitive equipment could actually notice them.
Have you watched the documentary(BBC4 I think) or read about Tetris?...
The problem with communism is if you end up with political types not unlike G.W. Bush running it. Would you want the Ministry of Video Games to be managed by Bush cronies? Wouldn't that be just terrible
If so, Tetris would be outlawed as a Weapon of Mass Distraction.
<<"If you admit wrongdoing and pay us $X million, we won't sue or request prosecution".
Its called as extortion and is prosecuted under RICO>
1) Offering to settle to avoid a lawsuit is common practice, and perfectly legal, if it's done in good faith. (Unlike, say, sending a postcard to everyone in town with this message and seeing who bites).
2) Even if it were extortion, RICO only applies if the same individual does it several times, demonstrating a pattern of criminal activity.
But, if uninstalling and reinstalling the software would really delete all registry key/value pairs, they would disable their 'security' mechanism theirself... that would be a nice way to circumvent it. And any DMCA responsibility with it.
Indeed, this is a good way of getting multiple "trial uses" out of trial versions of software packages (unless they are sufficiently uncouth as to store subscription information in hidden files and registry keys in non-obvious and out-of-the way (and usually deceptively labeled) places, in violation of clean Windows application practices).
At worst, this person is in breach of the user agreement of the software, and thus could probably get some civil liability,
Yes. Since he would be in breach of the EULA, at least they could cancel his licence to use the software, which would require him to uninstall it (which would presumably delete any files and registry keys that the software used...)
A natural person *is* offered settlements when they commit a crime. They call it a plea deal.
Yes, but this is very different. On the one hand, HP is offering the victims (probably) money in order to make this case go away. This is called a settlement offer.
If a natural person offers a district attorney money to make a prosecution go away, it is called a bribe.
For your analogy to be correct, it would have to be the victims who approached HP (rather than the other way around), saying something like "If you admit wrongdoing and pay us $X million, we won't sue or request prosecution".
After 5 rounds of free prep time you should be able to do better than that. Besides, that would hardly kill a level 17 cleric who'll be hovering around 170hp or so.
I was just using basic rules, and whipped this up off the top of my head. I didn't try to go for a really optimized scenario. Given the original model, 170hp would just take one more hit, well within the two-round limit.
You get one attack (sure for 50 damage) during the surprise round. The cleric moves away and you get a second attack for 50 damage. Then various bad things happen to you.
The rogue will get a free swing, then it goes to initiative. He will probably beat the cleric at that, which means he will get in four attacks averaging 182 points of damage before the cleric can even act once, or a fifth attack for 227 if the cleric steps away.
(Yes, as the original poster pointed out, if the cleric is wearing armor with fortification that will reduce the sneak attack damage which causes major problems).
That's assuming the cleric has no rounds of prep time,...
If somebody jumps you, they get prep time. You don't, since you can't predict just when the encounter will occur, and most buffs don't last for one hour/level (yes, the ones that do will probably be running).
... has no spot check,...
Even if you have an excellent spot check, it's hard to notice someone who is invisible and silent if you have no idea he's there, and no expectation that someone WOULD be there.
Besides, hide is a class skill for rogues, while spot is not a class skill for clerics, so just raw ranks would put the rogue at max 14, and the cleric at max 10.
... no items on, no contingent healing,... no spells up.
As I said, this was a fairly hastily-thought-up scenario. If we really wanted to make it fair, and compare apples to apples, the cleric would get items. And buffs. And so would the rogue. And the rogue would be L17, not L11.
... no ability to tumble,...
tumble lets you avoid an attack of opportunity when you move through a contested square as part of your movement. It doesn't let you avoid one when retreating.
It's pretty one sided, but the cleric will still probably win.
If he has the ability to take any action, he will likely drop the rogue in one or two rounds. The whole idea though was to be able to drop him before he gets a chance to do anything at all. Basically, just to show the basic concept that surprise is verypowerful, often more advantageous that several class levels.
In fact, many years ago, a famous chess master asserted that a one-move advantage was worth a full piece: he constructed a simple scenario in which the white player gave up all 7 of his major pieces in exchange for a 7-move headstart, which resulted in an instant win for white.
If you allow such cheese as Divine Metamagic, then things get progressively worse for non-spellcasters.
If the cleric can get any spells off at all, the rogue is likely toast, so metamagic isn't that important - it just asdds insult to injury.
Ahhh that reminds me of my days as a Kobold Thief/Priest in AD&D 2nd. Cast silence on a rock, put on ring of greater invisibility (actually existed in a 1st edition module, the idiots) and then walk up and 5x backstab a caster over and over. Those were the days.
If you don't like the potion of silence there is always using a scroll and casting it on his own armor, or weapon, or a rock, etc. use magic device is a Rogue's friend:)
Couple problems with your idea:
Brilliant energy does ignore the +3 glamered full plate he's wearing, yes, but not the moderate fortification on it. So your sneak attacks only have a 25% success rate.
Ooh! Gotta love fortification! Yes, that would definitely cause problems.
He does have combat casting and is a munchkin himself so he also has a several potions of invisibility. Chances are he would managed to drink one before he died.
This whole scenario absolutely depends on the cleric never being able to cast any spells
before he's killed, other than perhaps a single defensive or abjuration spell. All a potion of invisibilitiy would do for him would give the rogue -4 to hit the deathblow.
Then there's the problem of his spell resistance as he is a Drow and so at level 17 he actually has a SR of 28. Whoops, a potion of silence has a caster level of 3 so it's not possible for you to affect him with it.
Save and spell resistance on silence only apply when casting it on a creature. So if someone tried to cast silence on a Drow, he could save and resist, But if they cast it on the floor next to the Drow, or an unattended rock near the Drow, or on an object which is later brought near the Droaw, he gets NO save or SR. This is a game balance issue - if you cast a spell on someone, they're toast - they can't get out of the way afterwards (hence the save and SR), but if it's just somewhere nearby, they can just step away.
So then it's Quickened Sanctuary, Heal, True Seeing, and then you're a 150 point Harm spell away from being a really awesome zombie.
It would have to be a Silent Quickened sanctuary and/or true seeing, although the sanctuary alone would make him much harder to hit (on average, once/round; worse, if Heightened), and true seeing or invisibility purge would negate all but the initial sneak damage. There are many things the cleric could do, once he gets the opportunity to actually cast something.
Or chances are, since he's insane he'll do something silly like drop a quickened (Rod of Metamagic, Quicken) maximized fireball at his feet followed up by a cone of cold.
Both of which are REALLY effective against a rogue with improved evasion...
Oh wait - a cleric that can cast fireball AND cone of cold?? Just how many wizard spells are on his list, anyway?
With his Insanity bonus to spell DC the rogue is not making the save, so his evasion doesn't matter.
Insanity bonus? Just how high is that?
Even a normal Drow cleric who doesn't have access to elemental wizard spells would be fine. Just follow up Sanctuary with Invisibility Purge. A non-drow Cleric at that level might have some trouble, but that's their own dumb fault if they haven't invested in some spell resistance or fortification for their armor.
I will admit this is a one trick pony. If he gets the drop on the cleric and the cleric can't cast quiekened and/or silenct spells, he's very quick toast. Otherwise, the rogue is very quick toast.
Even if you managed to kill him, however, there is still the problem of the other cleric in the party, who happens to have had herself purposely turned into a vampire (Wish I was kidding about that) and who also turned the party's fighter while she was at it. 3rd edition fixed the "undead immune to invisibility" bit from earlier editions,
(see more details in my response to the parent reply to my original post).
Well the potion of silence (What a frickin' abuse of potion rules)
How about an oil of silence then? Different name, same dynamic.
... would theoretically negate the Cleric's ability to make listen checks as well as spell cast. However as I pointed out in my response to the guy, the cleric was a Drow, so he ignores the silence effect with his spell resistance anyway.
There are two things wrong with this: First silence has save and spell resistnce ONLY when cast upon a creature. Since the rogue is not objecting to it, it sticks to him, and affects anyone nearby.
Second, even if the cleric was immune to the silence effect, the rogue isn't, so he could sneak up with impunity and not be heard.
Funnily enough in the fight I quoted he did have true-seeing up since they were fighting a Shadow Dragon in the dark and they're frickin' hard to see.
True Seeing only gets rid of magical obscurity, not mundane obscurity - it still won't give you any bonuses for seeing a rogue sneaking up on you from shadows, or a secret door, etc. A visible silent sneaking rogue is still a silent sneaking rogue.
I'm a big fan of harm myself, but both harm and destruction have the problem of being touch attacks. Plus there's the fact that he's trying to pretend he's a wizard, so either of those spells would be a give away.
Unless an observer has a massive spellcraft skill, and is playing very close attention, they would be hard pressed to tell harm from vampiric touch, or destruction from disintegrate. (other than the fact that the cleric spells require touch, but wizards could deliver rays point-blank, and there is a metamagic feat in one of the supplements that lets you extend touch spells into rays). In any case, this whole scenario depends on the cleric never getting a single spell off before being killed. If he can cast anything, the rogue is most likely dead meat.
Besides, if the cleric is passing himself off as a wizard, how many delayed blast fireballs can such a wizard normally cast anyway? If he never casts any other spells, that in itself might look suspicious.
So what do you do if the Cleric has Trueseeing up or passes his listen check (since you're a *large* munchkin & you probably don't have points in DEX)?
My point here was not to build a balanced character, but rather one within normal parameters that could still wipe the floor with a higher level characters if he got the drop on him.
With true seeing it is reduced to normal thief with 14 ranks in hide (a class skill) sneaking up from behind a cleric with at most 10 ranks in spot (a non-class skill). Not guaranteed, but better than even odds. Listen is useless, since the rogue is silenced and makes no sounds to hear. (Save and spell resistance to silence only apply if you actually try to cast silence on a creature; since the potion is used on the rogue and not the cleric, save and SR don't apply.) The ONLY thing the cleric MIGHT notice is that he suddenly can't hear his own heart beating just as the rogue is breathing down his neck. The DC for such a check would probably be pretty high.
Casts quickened sanctuary (which you fail because your Will save sucks)? Hits you with a greater dispel? Then Destruction or a similar fort / will save vs death spell?
Of course, if the cleric gets to cast anything the rogue is toast. But
this whole wham-bam scenario depends vitally on the cleric never getting a chance to cast any spells at all. Since the cleric is within 10 feet of the silenced rogue, he can only cast spells prepared in advance with silence spell metamagic feat. Granted, I tend to have high-level clerics prepare a silenced dispel magic just for such occurrences), but how many clerics that you have ever played actually make routine use of such feats? Silent sanctuary from a WIS24 cleric would have a DC of 18, which the rogue would fail 2/3 of the time. This means he would likely get only one good WHACK in per round. Still, in the second round he only needs one hit to kill the cleric, so it doesn't help him.
Oh, that's right, you die. Horribly. Then you're raised as an zombie. Have a nice day.
A REALLY BIG half-Orc zombie:) Yes, but ONLY if the cleric actually gets to fire off a spell.
I'm not even taking possible domain spells like Greater Invisibility or Time Stop into account.
If the cleric is invisible, the rogue won't even attempt to sneak up on him, since he doesn't know he's there. Granted, if the cleric were buffed out the wazoo, some of the buffs might have interesting interactions...
All in all it really just depends on how each character is built & how smart the player or DM is.
Exactly. This is what I have been trying to say. It is less a matter of raw brute power then subtlety and cleverness. Of course, a L17 cleric or wizard would turn a L11 rogue into hamburger if he isn't surprised. (at worst, a word of recall or teleport to back away, followed by some careful scrying, buff spells, then teleport or plane shift or gate to pop back in with spells blazing. This whole scenario depends on the rogue getting surprise. But it points out that surprise can be worth more than six character levels! And at character levels where casters generally overpower non-casters to boot.
Two more flaws in your logic:
1.) Clerics have no problem casting spells near rogues, especially if they have Combat Casting or Skill Focus: Concentration. Or are in Defensive Casting mode, or all 3.
I never said he would have a problem casting a spell, provoking an attack of opportunity (By the time you're 17th level, even wizards can laugh at the concentration check). Just that he couldn't cast because of the silence. Attempting to step out of the area of silence would provoke an attack of opportunity.
2.) I'm pretty sure you can't take 3 sneak attacks in one round if your opponent isn't flanked.
Let us assume he is a L17 cleric with CON18. Average hit points are 148.
Try pitting him against the following opponent:
L11 Half-orc rogue, STR22(18+2 racial+2 via leveling)
Rogue sneaks up nearby (within 150 feet),
then tries to activate a wand of greater invisibility (75% chance of success;
if he fails he can try again until he succeeds), then in the next four rounds he drinks potions of silence, enlarge person, bull's strength and haste, then advances 30' after each potion (60' after the haste) until he is right next to the cleric.
Each successive round, wielding a +1 Brilliant Energy Greataxe (which is now large sized,
and passes through armor like a hot knife through butter),
he takes three sneak attacks (which are likely to hit), doing 3d6+1(axe)+13(1.5x9strength)
+6d6 sneak damage, average is 45.5 hp/hit. This will drop the cleric in two rounds, maybe 1 if he's lucky.
To add insult to injury, 1 in 5 hits do 50+ damage, triggering a Massive Damage check.
The cleric cannot cast spells near the rogue, so he's virtually helpless.
If he tries to move away, the rogue gets a sneak attack of opportunity which will drop the
cleric during the first round instead of having to wait for the second round.
This virtually indestructible character is killed in 1-2 rounds by an opponent six levels below him, and using equipment well within the average budget of a character of that level.
Power has its uses, but subtlety can easily trump it any day.
While it's true that the release of a new version of any product doesn't automatically turn the old version into a pumpkin, it does have several bad effects on the old version:
1) With all the focus on the new version, technical support (and product upgrades) for the previous version become slim to non-existent
2) With many users of the old version migrating to the new version, it becomes harder and harder to find people who understand the old version (let alone use it actively).
3) When a product is supported by a large user community, a new version will tend to fragment the community, with some people switching to the new version, and some choosing not to do so. (In D&D terms, this means it will be harder and harder to find people to play with using the old version).
I believe that you have a certain amount of time to file an appeal, but in order to do so, you first have to file a notice of intent to file an appeal, and for that there is a much smaller time limit. This temporarily stays the judgment and gives you a reasonable time to work on the appeal itself.
it thought there would be an automatic stay on enforcement of the judgment
This is rich. If I paid lawyers substantially more than $200 an hour, I would expect far more from them than "uh, gee, yeronner, that's how we thought the law was supposed to work..."
Who the f*** decided that sentences on the Internet shall no longer be formatted with two spaces after a period?!
That rule was a typographic convention that applied to setting physical type. HTML rules treat multiple spaces as being irrelevant. It's ultimately up to the rendering client (i.e. browser) to decide just how text is displayed, according to standard commonly-accepted text rendering conventions based on the context (such as the language of the reader, etc.) So if you don't see a wider space after a period than elsewhere, and think you should, complain to your browser's author (or use an open source browser and change it yourself).
Suppose Process A, B, and C all want to access a specific resource. If they all
try at once, one will succeed and the others will either fail or block. If they take
a non-blocking approach, they may decide to wait some amount of time, then
reattempt the acquisition. If they all wait 5 seconds, then try again, they will
be in the same situation of all trying to acquire the resource at the same time.
This is the whole POINT of using random numbers. If they wait for random times (for a suitably adequate definition of "random"), the likelihood of a second collision after the first collision is quite small. However, abysmal random number generators will not guarantee this. In particular (getpid()&31) will cause two processes to collide about 3% of the time. Furthermore, any two processes that collide with each other will ALWAYS do so with each other, since getpid() will not change for the lives of the processes.
This differences don't need
to be completely random or unique, they only need to be "usually" different.
In this case getpid() is good enough and faster than a call to random().
Faster? How so? I don't know of any systems in which a divide instruction is slower than an operating system call.
Not according to the court's definition of "fucking".
Yes, the same thought occurred to me too at the time, but I didn't want to go there.
Besides, if I went to Washington, and said: I did not have sexual relations with that idiot
that would open up a HUGE can of worms I would really prefer to avoid!;)
I would like to invite you to speculate when 'normal' cellphones will be considered 'video-recording-equipment'. Because I don't think that such a law can be enforced by then.
Yes, but it would be a hard sell to a jury, most of whom probably own cell phones, and go to movies themselves.
Which is all true. So they should have chosen a better angle under which to file a complaint. Either find someone affected, or argue convincingly that such state secrets are unconstitutional. Should be a breeze given the current make up of the supreme court.
Wait. You think that the current conservatively-biased court would vote against the Republican administration and its theories about state secrets and executive privilege?
Slashdot Mirror
Who could have ever guessed that Slashdotters were pedantic nerds with nothing better to do on a Saturday night than correct a minor error?
You apparently haven't been here very long...
The Japanese also invaded China and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people, does that make it OK for us to do so as well? I think not.
Well, Fearless Leader seems to think it was a good idea in Iraq...
I haven't read the entire Comcast TOS, but I assume there's nothing in it that prevents them from limiting the number of connections of certain protocols.
Limiting the number of connections to a fixed limit is throttling. If that limit is 0, it's no longer throttling, it's total suppression. How would you like your phone company if any phone call placed outside your own area code got cut off automatically after 20 seconds? Would you tolerate that?
As far as "see no evil" protections, they are not censoring based on content, they are throttling based on protocol.
They are doing this to all bittorrent traffic outside their network (but not between peers that are both within the Comcast network). Hence my "same area code" comment above.
However, I also have no problem with Comcast restricting the type of traffic that comes across their network.
This is all well and fine, if they actually said in their TOS that bittorrent traffic is not permitted. But they don't, do they?
Let's not pretend that most torrent traffic is legitimate...we all know it isn't. That's like suggesting legalization pot for everyone because it may help with some the side effects of chemo (there is no glaucoma benefit, btw). That argument has nothing to do with the general population.
The current drug laws work on the theory of "Some people use this substance for illegitimate purposes, so let's make it illegal even for those who want to use it legitimately.". I guess the same applies to bittorrent as well.
Frankly, blocking torrent traffic is the only sure way Comcast could secure themselves from lawsuits by copyright holders, which, I am sure, scares them a lot more than some nerds on Slashdot.
ISPs are common carriers, which makes them immune to such copyright lawsuits, in much the same way the RIAA won't sue AT&T if you decided to sing "Like a Virgin" over the phone. Under the DMCA all they have to do is take down alleged infringing content and notify alleged infrigers - if they do that, they have no liability.
Sending a RST packet is a perfectly legitimate way to close an unallowed TCP connection.
Yes, but what right does the ISP have to just automatically assume that such a connection is unallowed? There is no mention in the TOS that such traffic is forbidden. Also, by analyzing traffic and deciding what to censor based on content removes the "see no evil" protections of being a common carrier, which could make Comcast itself liable for all piracy on their network.
If thunderclouds can accelerate radiation energy, how come I never heard of people died in places where there are lots of thuderstorm activities due to radiation overdose?
The gamma rays were only detected because they were near a nuclear power plant. Presumably such plants have very sensitive radiation detection equipment, and the number of ACTUAL gamma ray photos is sufficiently low that only very sensitive equipment could actually notice them.
Have you watched the documentary(BBC4 I think) or read about Tetris? ...
The problem with communism is if you end up with political types not unlike G.W. Bush running it. Would you want the Ministry of Video Games to be managed by Bush cronies? Wouldn't that be just terrible
If so, Tetris would be outlawed as a Weapon of Mass Distraction.
<<"If you admit wrongdoing and pay us $X million, we won't sue or request prosecution".
Its called as extortion and is prosecuted under RICO>
1) Offering to settle to avoid a lawsuit is common practice, and perfectly legal, if it's done in good faith. (Unlike, say, sending a postcard to everyone in town with this message and seeing who bites).
2) Even if it were extortion, RICO only applies if the same individual does it several times, demonstrating a pattern of criminal activity.
No amount of audio processing will help you deliver sound from multiple sources into your ears simultaneously if you don't know where those ears are.
;)
Of course not! That's what the web cam and real-time face-detection software are for. Do you know how much RAM and CPU that all takes??
But, if uninstalling and reinstalling the software would really delete all registry key/value pairs, they would disable their 'security' mechanism theirself... that would be a nice way to circumvent it. And any DMCA responsibility with it.
Indeed, this is a good way of getting multiple "trial uses" out of trial versions of software packages (unless they are sufficiently uncouth as to store subscription information in hidden files and registry keys in non-obvious and out-of-the way (and usually deceptively labeled) places, in violation of clean Windows application practices).
At worst, this person is in breach of the user agreement of the software, and thus could probably get some civil liability,
Yes. Since he would be in breach of the EULA, at least they could cancel his licence to use the software, which would require him to uninstall it (which would presumably delete any files and registry keys that the software used...)
A natural person *is* offered settlements when they commit a crime. They call it a plea deal.
Yes, but this is very different. On the one hand, HP is offering the victims (probably) money in order to make this case go away. This is called a settlement offer.
If a natural person offers a district attorney money to make a prosecution go away, it is called a bribe.
For your analogy to be correct, it would have to be the victims who approached HP (rather than the other way around), saying something like "If you admit wrongdoing and pay us $X million, we won't sue or request prosecution".
After 5 rounds of free prep time you should be able to do better than that. Besides, that would hardly kill a level 17 cleric who'll be hovering around 170hp or so.
...
... has no spot check, ...
... no items on, no contingent healing, ... no spells up.
... no ability to tumble, ...
I was just using basic rules, and whipped this up off the top of my head. I didn't try to go for a really optimized scenario. Given the original model, 170hp would just take one more hit, well within the two-round limit.
You get one attack (sure for 50 damage) during the surprise round. The cleric moves away and you get a second attack for 50 damage. Then various bad things happen to you.
The rogue will get a free swing, then it goes to initiative. He will probably beat the cleric at that, which means he will get in four attacks averaging 182 points of damage before the cleric can even act once, or a fifth attack for 227 if the cleric steps away. (Yes, as the original poster pointed out, if the cleric is wearing armor with fortification that will reduce the sneak attack damage which causes major problems).
That's assuming the cleric has no rounds of prep time,
If somebody jumps you, they get prep time. You don't, since you can't predict just when the encounter will occur, and most buffs don't last for one hour/level (yes, the ones that do will probably be running).
Even if you have an excellent spot check, it's hard to notice someone who is invisible and silent if you have no idea he's there, and no expectation that someone WOULD be there. Besides, hide is a class skill for rogues, while spot is not a class skill for clerics, so just raw ranks would put the rogue at max 14, and the cleric at max 10.
As I said, this was a fairly hastily-thought-up scenario. If we really wanted to make it fair, and compare apples to apples, the cleric would get items. And buffs. And so would the rogue. And the rogue would be L17, not L11.
tumble lets you avoid an attack of opportunity when you move through a contested square as part of your movement. It doesn't let you avoid one when retreating.
It's pretty one sided, but the cleric will still probably win.
If he has the ability to take any action, he will likely drop the rogue in one or two rounds. The whole idea though was to be able to drop him before he gets a chance to do anything at all. Basically, just to show the basic concept that surprise is verypowerful, often more advantageous that several class levels.
In fact, many years ago, a famous chess master asserted that a one-move advantage was worth a full piece: he constructed a simple scenario in which the white player gave up all 7 of his major pieces in exchange for a 7-move headstart, which resulted in an instant win for white.
If you allow such cheese as Divine Metamagic, then things get progressively worse for non-spellcasters.
If the cleric can get any spells off at all, the rogue is likely toast, so metamagic isn't that important - it just asdds insult to injury.
Ahhh that reminds me of my days as a Kobold Thief/Priest in AD&D 2nd. Cast silence on a rock, put on ring of greater invisibility (actually existed in a 1st edition module, the idiots) and then walk up and 5x backstab a caster over and over. Those were the days.
:)
If you don't like the potion of silence there is always using a scroll and casting it on his own armor, or weapon, or a rock, etc. use magic device is a Rogue's friend
Couple problems with your idea:
Brilliant energy does ignore the +3 glamered full plate he's wearing, yes, but not the moderate fortification on it. So your sneak attacks only have a 25% success rate.
Ooh! Gotta love fortification! Yes, that would definitely cause problems.
He does have combat casting and is a munchkin himself so he also has a several potions of invisibility. Chances are he would managed to drink one before he died.
This whole scenario absolutely depends on the cleric never being able to cast any spells before he's killed, other than perhaps a single defensive or abjuration spell. All a potion of invisibilitiy would do for him would give the rogue -4 to hit the deathblow.
Then there's the problem of his spell resistance as he is a Drow and so at level 17 he actually has a SR of 28. Whoops, a potion of silence has a caster level of 3 so it's not possible for you to affect him with it.
Save and spell resistance on silence only apply when casting it on a creature. So if someone tried to cast silence on a Drow, he could save and resist, But if they cast it on the floor next to the Drow, or an unattended rock near the Drow, or on an object which is later brought near the Droaw, he gets NO save or SR. This is a game balance issue - if you cast a spell on someone, they're toast - they can't get out of the way afterwards (hence the save and SR), but if it's just somewhere nearby, they can just step away.
So then it's Quickened Sanctuary, Heal, True Seeing, and then you're a 150 point Harm spell away from being a really awesome zombie.
It would have to be a Silent Quickened sanctuary and/or true seeing, although the sanctuary alone would make him much harder to hit (on average, once/round; worse, if Heightened), and true seeing or invisibility purge would negate all but the initial sneak damage. There are many things the cleric could do, once he gets the opportunity to actually cast something.
Or chances are, since he's insane he'll do something silly like drop a quickened (Rod of Metamagic, Quicken) maximized fireball at his feet followed up by a cone of cold.
Both of which are REALLY effective against a rogue with improved evasion...
Oh wait - a cleric that can cast fireball AND cone of cold?? Just how many wizard spells are on his list, anyway?
With his Insanity bonus to spell DC the rogue is not making the save, so his evasion doesn't matter.
Insanity bonus? Just how high is that?
Even a normal Drow cleric who doesn't have access to elemental wizard spells would be fine. Just follow up Sanctuary with Invisibility Purge. A non-drow Cleric at that level might have some trouble, but that's their own dumb fault if they haven't invested in some spell resistance or fortification for their armor.
I will admit this is a one trick pony. If he gets the drop on the cleric and the cleric can't cast quiekened and/or silenct spells, he's very quick toast. Otherwise, the rogue is very quick toast.
Even if you managed to kill him, however, there is still the problem of the other cleric in the party, who happens to have had herself purposely turned into a vampire (Wish I was kidding about that) and who also turned the party's fighter while she was at it. 3rd edition fixed the "undead immune to invisibility" bit from earlier editions,
(see more details in my response to the parent reply to my original post).
... would theoretically negate the Cleric's ability to make listen checks as well as spell cast. However as I pointed out in my response to the guy, the cleric was a Drow, so he ignores the silence effect with his spell resistance anyway.
Well the potion of silence (What a frickin' abuse of potion rules)
How about an oil of silence then? Different name, same dynamic.
There are two things wrong with this: First silence has save and spell resistnce ONLY when cast upon a creature. Since the rogue is not objecting to it, it sticks to him, and affects anyone nearby.
Second, even if the cleric was immune to the silence effect, the rogue isn't, so he could sneak up with impunity and not be heard.
Funnily enough in the fight I quoted he did have true-seeing up since they were fighting a Shadow Dragon in the dark and they're frickin' hard to see.
True Seeing only gets rid of magical obscurity, not mundane obscurity - it still won't give you any bonuses for seeing a rogue sneaking up on you from shadows, or a secret door, etc. A visible silent sneaking rogue is still a silent sneaking rogue.
I'm a big fan of harm myself, but both harm and destruction have the problem of being touch attacks. Plus there's the fact that he's trying to pretend he's a wizard, so either of those spells would be a give away.
Unless an observer has a massive spellcraft skill, and is playing very close attention, they would be hard pressed to tell harm from vampiric touch, or destruction from disintegrate. (other than the fact that the cleric spells require touch, but wizards could deliver rays point-blank, and there is a metamagic feat in one of the supplements that lets you extend touch spells into rays). In any case, this whole scenario depends on the cleric never getting a single spell off before being killed. If he can cast anything, the rogue is most likely dead meat.
Besides, if the cleric is passing himself off as a wizard, how many delayed blast fireballs can such a wizard normally cast anyway? If he never casts any other spells, that in itself might look suspicious.
So what do you do if the Cleric has Trueseeing up or passes his listen check (since you're a *large* munchkin & you probably don't have points in DEX)?
:) Yes, but ONLY if the cleric actually gets to fire off a spell.
My point here was not to build a balanced character, but rather one within normal parameters that could still wipe the floor with a higher level characters if he got the drop on him.
With true seeing it is reduced to normal thief with 14 ranks in hide (a class skill) sneaking up from behind a cleric with at most 10 ranks in spot (a non-class skill). Not guaranteed, but better than even odds. Listen is useless, since the rogue is silenced and makes no sounds to hear. (Save and spell resistance to silence only apply if you actually try to cast silence on a creature; since the potion is used on the rogue and not the cleric, save and SR don't apply.) The ONLY thing the cleric MIGHT notice is that he suddenly can't hear his own heart beating just as the rogue is breathing down his neck. The DC for such a check would probably be pretty high.
Casts quickened sanctuary (which you fail because your Will save sucks)? Hits you with a greater dispel? Then Destruction or a similar fort / will save vs death spell?
Of course, if the cleric gets to cast anything the rogue is toast. But this whole wham-bam scenario depends vitally on the cleric never getting a chance to cast any spells at all. Since the cleric is within 10 feet of the silenced rogue, he can only cast spells prepared in advance with silence spell metamagic feat. Granted, I tend to have high-level clerics prepare a silenced dispel magic just for such occurrences), but how many clerics that you have ever played actually make routine use of such feats? Silent sanctuary from a WIS24 cleric would have a DC of 18, which the rogue would fail 2/3 of the time. This means he would likely get only one good WHACK in per round. Still, in the second round he only needs one hit to kill the cleric, so it doesn't help him.
Oh, that's right, you die. Horribly. Then you're raised as an zombie. Have a nice day.
A REALLY BIG half-Orc zombie
I'm not even taking possible domain spells like Greater Invisibility or Time Stop into account.
If the cleric is invisible, the rogue won't even attempt to sneak up on him, since he doesn't know he's there. Granted, if the cleric were buffed out the wazoo, some of the buffs might have interesting interactions...
All in all it really just depends on how each character is built & how smart the player or DM is.
Exactly. This is what I have been trying to say. It is less a matter of raw brute power then subtlety and cleverness. Of course, a L17 cleric or wizard would turn a L11 rogue into hamburger if he isn't surprised. (at worst, a word of recall or teleport to back away, followed by some careful scrying, buff spells, then teleport or plane shift or gate to pop back in with spells blazing. This whole scenario depends on the rogue getting surprise. But it points out that surprise can be worth more than six character levels! And at character levels where casters generally overpower non-casters to boot.
Two more flaws in your logic:
1.) Clerics have no problem casting spells near rogues, especially if they have Combat Casting or Skill Focus: Concentration. Or are in Defensive Casting mode, or all 3.
I never said he would have a problem casting a spell, provoking an attack of opportunity (By the time you're 17th level, even wizards can laugh at the concentration check). Just that he couldn't cast because of the silence. Attempting to step out of the area of silence would provoke an attack of opportunity.
2.) I'm pretty sure you can't take 3 sneak attacks in one round if your opponent isn't flanked.
Let us assume he is a L17 cleric with CON18. Average hit points are 148.
Try pitting him against the following opponent:
L11 Half-orc rogue, STR22(18+2 racial+2 via leveling)
Rogue sneaks up nearby (within 150 feet), then tries to activate a wand of greater invisibility (75% chance of success; if he fails he can try again until he succeeds), then in the next four rounds he drinks potions of silence, enlarge person, bull's strength and haste, then advances 30' after each potion (60' after the haste) until he is right next to the cleric.
Each successive round, wielding a +1 Brilliant Energy Greataxe (which is now large sized, and passes through armor like a hot knife through butter), he takes three sneak attacks (which are likely to hit), doing 3d6+1(axe)+13(1.5x9strength) +6d6 sneak damage, average is 45.5 hp/hit. This will drop the cleric in two rounds, maybe 1 if he's lucky.
To add insult to injury, 1 in 5 hits do 50+ damage, triggering a Massive Damage check.
The cleric cannot cast spells near the rogue, so he's virtually helpless. If he tries to move away, the rogue gets a sneak attack of opportunity which will drop the cleric during the first round instead of having to wait for the second round.
This virtually indestructible character is killed in 1-2 rounds by an opponent six levels below him, and using equipment well within the average budget of a character of that level.
Power has its uses, but subtlety can easily trump it any day.
While it's true that the release of a new version of any product doesn't automatically turn the old version into a pumpkin, it does have several bad effects on the old version:
1) With all the focus on the new version, technical support (and product upgrades) for the previous version become slim to non-existent
2) With many users of the old version migrating to the new version, it becomes harder and harder to find people who understand the old version (let alone use it actively).
3) When a product is supported by a large user community, a new version will tend to fragment the community, with some people switching to the new version, and some choosing not to do so. (In D&D terms, this means it will be harder and harder to find people to play with using the old version).
I believe that you have a certain amount of time to file an appeal, but in order to do so, you first have to file a notice of intent to file an appeal, and for that there is a much smaller time limit. This temporarily stays the judgment and gives you a reasonable time to work on the appeal itself.
it thought there would be an automatic stay on enforcement of the judgment
This is rich. If I paid lawyers substantially more than $200 an hour, I would expect far more from them than "uh, gee, yeronner, that's how we thought the law was supposed to work..."
Who the f*** decided that sentences on the Internet shall no longer be formatted with two spaces after a period?!
That rule was a typographic convention that applied to setting physical type. HTML rules treat multiple spaces as being irrelevant. It's ultimately up to the rendering client (i.e. browser) to decide just how text is displayed, according to standard commonly-accepted text rendering conventions based on the context (such as the language of the reader, etc.) So if you don't see a wider space after a period than elsewhere, and think you should, complain to your browser's author (or use an open source browser and change it yourself).
Suppose Process A, B, and C all want to access a specific resource. If they all try at once, one will succeed and the others will either fail or block. If they take a non-blocking approach, they may decide to wait some amount of time, then reattempt the acquisition. If they all wait 5 seconds, then try again, they will be in the same situation of all trying to acquire the resource at the same time.
This is the whole POINT of using random numbers. If they wait for random times (for a suitably adequate definition of "random"), the likelihood of a second collision after the first collision is quite small. However, abysmal random number generators will not guarantee this. In particular (getpid()&31) will cause two processes to collide about 3% of the time. Furthermore, any two processes that collide with each other will ALWAYS do so with each other, since getpid() will not change for the lives of the processes.
This differences don't need to be completely random or unique, they only need to be "usually" different. In this case getpid() is good enough and faster than a call to random().
Faster? How so? I don't know of any systems in which a divide instruction is slower than an operating system call.
> You're not just dense, you're a fucking idiot
;)
Not according to the court's definition of "fucking".
Yes, the same thought occurred to me too at the time, but I didn't want to go there.
Besides, if I went to Washington, and said:
I did not have sexual relations with that idiot
that would open up a HUGE can of worms I would really prefer to avoid!
I would like to invite you to speculate when 'normal' cellphones will be considered 'video-recording-equipment'. Because I don't think that such a law can be enforced by then.
Yes, but it would be a hard sell to a jury, most of whom probably own cell phones, and go to movies themselves.
Which is all true. So they should have chosen a better angle under which to file a complaint. Either find someone affected, or argue convincingly that such state secrets are unconstitutional. Should be a breeze given the current make up of the supreme court.
Wait. You think that the current conservatively-biased court would vote against the Republican administration and its theories about state secrets and executive privilege?
I stand corrected.
You're not just dense, you're a fucking idiot
Once again, your resorting to ad-hominem attacks weakens the strength of your argument, no matter how correct it ma be.
Just try saying "nya nya-nya nya nya" in a court of law and see how well that impresses a judge or jury.